“Jane you ignorant slut!”

Actually, that’s exactly what we’re doing here.

This guy needs to familiarize himself with how a Primary works.

The WH managed events are intended to bring forth supportive PR opportunities for press coverage in advancing the President’s agenda. They aren’t public townhall Q&A sessions to hold the Prez accountable.

W didn’t start these, bwt. RR and MikeDeaver did… brilliantly, too. And SlickWilly raised them to a snake-oil salesman huckster at the carne level of self-promotion.

What I’ve liked about W’s few townhall events is that it isn’t about him… it’s about moving his Administration’s agenda forward. And no one in the press is misses that they are staged events, carefully orchestrated and participants are vetted long before entering the venue.

The comparsion your emailer and others here raised about excusing CNN’s Dan Rather Moment because the same thing happens at WH managed press events is false.

Just for your future reference…. calling anyone involved with blogging a “terrorist” is simply not allowed by the Leftist Blogosphere.

I also think that the time, energy and effort you and the others put into this blog is worthy of our respect and the collective appreciation of even those who don’t agree with your “ideological fatwa” (I think he/she meant philosophies not fatwa) –those energies are expended in a solidly honest way to engage in debate on great issues and (maybe a little) try to redress the wrongs you see evident in the press, politics, and our community and culture.

Probably, the better choice for you in this case, though, would have been to ignore his/her email and simply delete it. Nothing in the email is any different than is routinely commented upon in the threads… it’s the same kind of non-debate cliché dragging we’ve read just in the prior few threads.

Sometimes it makes sense for someone with your kind of public responsibilities to manage the frustration and ignore the guy/gal. I hope he/she doesn’t continue to irritate you because it should be clear that it’s a waste of their time… but that’s a tough lesson to learn.

Maybe a better course is to NOT publish those redacted and non-identifying comments because I would guess that person feels like they’ve now had the “public” or community voice they think you’ve denied him/her in the past. So of like negotiating with terrorists… it never works out for the benefit of situation or for the long term.

One thing that IS good though is you’ve allowed us to better understand the crap you put up to keep the blog community here vibrant. I’m not sure other readers here appreciate that perspective.

JMHO.

And Bruce, good answer. The simple reality is this: The Democratic operatives misrepresented themselves, and CNN allowed them to. That was plain sleazy. Yes, the questions were fine. Yes, it’s always good to see politicians asked tough questions. Now, to even things out, can CNN please have Republicans with some tough, “strongly premised” or biased questions in the next Democrats’ debate?

(I know, Ian just has to toe the party line that Democrats are perfect.)

DADT wasn’t brought up at the Democrat “debate,”

Actually, it was brought up at at least one Dem debate if not the You Tube one. Furthermore, same-sex marriage was brought up at the Dem You Tube debate but oddly missing from the Republick You Tube debate.

Maybe it doesn’t jibe well with their pandering to homophobes.